People & climate before profits! Support legal help for participants of civil disobedience actions in Czech Republic

The Severočeské doly (“North Bohemian Coal Mines”) company uses penalties and pre-action chalenges in an attempt to punish people, who participated in civil disobedience for climate justice against the expansion of the Bílina lignite mine. With legal repression, they think they can silence protests against coal mining. Let’s show them we will not get intimidated and let’s support legal help for the people involved. It is the climate we need to protect, not the company’s profits!

THEY WANT TO STOP THE CLIMATE JUSTICE MOVEMENT, BUT THEY WILL NOT SUCCEED. SOLIDARITY IS OUR WEAPON!

The coal industry representatives around the world are fighting tooth and nail to suppress power of the growing movement which exposes devastating impact of their activity and protests against their dirty business. The Czech Mining Authority is imposing penalties worth thousands of CZK to brave people who entered the Bílina mine last summer protesting against its expansion. The Severočeské doly company, a part of the ČEZ Group, which operates the mine also sent letters before court action to almost a hundred people demanding a penalty of more than CZK 600,000. Support us and help us provide these climate activists with legal consultancy.

We are facing climate emergency. We have at best a couple of decades to abandon fossil fuels completely. If we want to avoid global warming of more than 1.5 degree Celsius, we need to reduce emissions by 65% in the next decade and stop burning coal. Otherwise, we will be facing catastrophic and irreversible climate change. Yet ČEZ is going to increase coal mining by 8% in the next year, expand mining limits in the Bílina lignite mine and sell Počerady, the dirtiest Czech power station, to the notorious coal baron Pavel Tykač instead of shutting it down. It is this unsustainable, irresponsible and unacceptable policy that people are calling attention to. Civil disobedience is perfectly appropriate in a situation like this.

ČEZ is one of the most profitable companies in the Czech Republic. Its top management received CZK 22 million on bonuses in 2017 only, thanks to the Severočeské doly company. The amount claimed from activists is negligible for them, but devastating for an ordinary person. It is thus clearly a purposive attempt to silence protests pointing to harms caused by the coal industry. We are ready to resist these attempts together and with all our might. And so we are asking you for help as well. We would appreciate your financial support to ensure legal help for all people that ČEZ tries to intimidate and discourage.

You can also launch your own fund-raising campaign or a benefit concert – there are no limits for imagination! United we can make it and nobody will be left alone. Repression cannot stop us. Whether the coal industry likes it or not, the climate justice movement will carry on and continue to grow. You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming!

Until the last coal mine and the last coal-fired power station is shut down, We Are the Limits!